Slonie

Happy to see another Bay Area 7 will be hitting the road soon! As for your questions... @ralph has some fairly recent and local knowledge here, perhaps he can help...

Group drive with friends and breakfast at Godzilla's over the weekend. Also took the 7 to the go-kart place and can confirm that their steering wheels are bigger than mine!

You can find him here, he always posts in that group…

The silver belts look sharp! I've been lagging on installing crotch belts* for my OEM 4-point harnesses (with buckles that can accept them, a relief). Either that, or just getting the Schroth ASMs and being done with it as this is (so far) a street-driven car. *and at that point, figuring out if I'm doubling up on the lap belt anchors or drilling the floor and installing a plate for the sub belts — @Xhilr8n , I assume these plates went in underneath your floor and secured with those eyebolts for the anti-sub belts?

Thanks for making the spreadsheet, @hyper7! I'll wondering which (many? all?) of the fasteners are different on an imperial chassis, I'll let you know when I get around to doing this...

This guy always has the cleverest ideas (and posts them on FB). Same guy who set up the CPU fan pedal box air extractor.

ProjectFarm just did a comparison test on trim restorers and Cerakote totally ran away with it. Tempted to try it on some trim on my other cars, although like Anthem said I'd be a little curious about using it on a touch point. The one tip I found from the comments section is to mask really well as this stuff really doesn't want to come off. As a side note, I've been curious about using 303 on the tonneau/trunk when the time comes.

Do you have the stock oil pan or a Raceline (or otherwise lower-profile) sump? If it's the former, the Raceline sump could get you up to a whopping 3" of clearance, maybe...* *this is actually a guess, I'm not sure how much more clearance the Raceline has. If it looks aluminum and is full of fins it's probably the Raceline sump though.

This is something of a tangent but — I would pay a lot for seat sliders that don't freeze up (either by ingress of gravel, or who knows what else). Mine barely moved when I got my car and now I can't move the seats at all. I figure the only way to really get access to fix them will be to remove them, but I've been pre-traumatized by every thread I've read about installing them...

Get a quote from Hagerty, if you're driving few (compared to a daily driver, anyway) miles per year at least I can tell you it'll be a lot cheaper than these guys.

I feel like it looks quite tidy for a Locost but they say it's definitely a (UK, I assume) kit. Agree that it's definitely not a Westfield — Briefly compared against a Robin Hood and while they share the same horizontal belt line, nothing conclusive from it. I'm sure somebody here will know though!

What sizes? (and price, as long as I'm asking — even if not for me, maybe for someone else locally)

I found myself a sudden expert on upper column replacement recently due to a steering column bushing replacement, although I did not touch my lower column for this job. There's two recent threads on the topic in here in fact. The good news is, with the OEM QR column you don't have a steering column lock and so you can remove the upper column quite easily without disturbing the bushings, simply by undoing the telescoping clamp between the upper and lower columns (loosen the locknut followed by the grub screw on the clamp immediately forward of the firewall, then undo the two bolts and remove the clamp — now the upper column will be free of the lower column and you can pull it out from the driver's seat using the wheel as a handle). I posted a bunch of pics from my job in the thread. Again, you should have an easier time with a QR column as it lacks the locking collar that interferes with the upper bushing upon removal. You should be able to remove and reinstall it without issue. As for the lower column, that's outside my wheelhouse but it should be somewhat easy to deal with once the upper column is removed (famous last words, I know).

The only good news about this ill-advised idea is it sounds like the Kuwaiti investment group just want to license the name (because it has "strong recall", lol) for their (doomed) team and Caterham wouldn't be thowing any money away on the affair. But did anyone even ask Caterham/VT Holdings about this before going to press?

So just to clarify — you've got an air bubble in your cooling system? What are the symptoms you're experiencing? Thermostat not opening? There are plenty of resources if you search about bleeding/purging a cooling system, but the upshot is usually to try and get your bleed port (either the top of the radiator or the top of the expansion tank) higher than everything else, lifting the front of the car can aid in this. And of course, having a big funnel fitted to the top of the expansion tank that you can keep topped up while the car is idling and you're giving the radiator hoses a good squeeze. Although, after many experiences of bleeding a cooling system the old fashioned way, I've become a believer in a vacuum cooling system filler tool, myself. I also added a bleed tee to the upper radiator hose (before settling on the vacuum tool) as that part is higher than the expansion tank on my car. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BW39HJS This is the tool I used when I filled my system last year.